Minute by Minute
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: She tries never to cry. [Morning routine in the NICU.]


_**A/N** : Thanks to the prompt "morning routine" and my own sad heart. Enjoy?_

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Everything is regimented in the hospital: the food, the clothing, workers, the shifts, even the air. At first, Jane hadn't known how to get used to it; she couldn't eat the food, she hated wearing the clothes, she couldn't keep track of the nurses' schedules. Even though every morning was the same, each was exhausting and stressful, and by noon she just wanted it to be night so she could could try to go to sleep to escape this waking nightmare.

But now things have settled. They have been here for months, and she has learned the ropes, just as she had during those first few early weeks at the FBI. She wakes before the changing of shift, at 7AM, so she's ready when the nurses come in and check on her. They do the normal things: checking her blood pressure and her heart rate and the different levels of cells in her blood. Once they're certain she's at somewhat acceptable level, all things considered, they leave, always mentioning when they'll be back, or that she can call them if she needs to. If anything happened to Anthony during the night, they tell her then, though thankfully, those morning briefings have been happening less and less.

Oscar arrives at eight every morning, on his way to work. He used to stay with her all day and night, the first couple weeks, and while his bosses had been very understanding about his situation, it had quietly been made clear to him that they couldn't give him early paternity leave forever, and besides, his vacation days are running out. So he went back to work, and she stayed at the hospital, on medical leave from her own job because the doctors still hadn't deemed her well enough to go home yet. Though she hated being stuck in the hospital all day, at least it meant she got to stay with her son. She tried not thinking about it too much, but part of her was very frightened that she might be deemed well before he was—and that she, like Oscar, would have to go back to work while their son was left alone, watched over by strangers and beeping monitors.

When Oscar arrives each morning, they walk together to the tenth floor. If she's tired, they take the elevator; if she wants to strain herself, they take the stairs. She grips the railing, and he holds tight onto her free hand and helps her up each step, but she doesn't do that much anymore, especially now that he's back at work. He only has so much time to spend with their son before he has to leave for the day, and she doesn't want to take even a second of it away from him.

They say hello to the nurses on shift for the day when the arrive outside the neonatal care room. Both her and Oscar know all their names now, first and last, and some of their birthdays. At times, it seems like the hospital has become their new neighborhood. She tries not to hate it too much; she knows everyone here is here to help.

Upon entering the room, they move to the back of the it, to Ant's little bed, and sit beside him. Those first few weeks, they just sat at his bedside, barred from touching him in case they caused him undue stress, and watched him. Sometimes Oscar sang or hummed to him, but most of the time they sat in silence, too scared to disrupt him even with the sound of their own voices. Now, he's strong enough that they can touch him, and hold him. He was taken off his feeding tube just last week, so Jane can now breastfeed him regularly—that is, if and when he takes. Sometimes he doesn't—sometimes they spend that entire hour together as a family trying to get him to latch on and he doesn't, and she wants to scream, because she feels so worthless and helpless and completely incapable. This is the only time she has to spend with her husband, the only time they have together with their baby and she can't even get Anthony to _eat_ —

She tries never to cry because she knows if she does that, it might set him off too, and the last thing he needs before leaving them to go into work is to spend his morning crying. Sometimes she succeeds, and all he has to do is press a quick kiss to her forehead, and reassure her that he knows Anthony will latch on the next time she tries. Other times, she doesn't succeed, and she ends up weeping, turning her face into her husband's chest like a child, staining his clothes for work with her tears while he is forced to spend his precious few remaining minutes with them comforting her. He never, ever complains. But she can imagine the looks he gets at work. She knows how he hates being pitied.

By eight-forty-five, Oscar has to leave for work. He'll still be late; with the rush-hour traffic, he never arrives earlier than nine-twenty, but his bosses can accept this tardiness, since he stays the rest of the day, and they know where he comes from. On Wednesdays, he gets an extra long lunch and can squeeze in another quick trip back to the hospital to check on them both, but most of the time he has to stay at work. He calls Jane during his lunch hour, though, every day, and they talk through the morning apart. She updates him on Ant's condition—if there have been any changes—and he tells her the comparatively meaningless details of his day. She hungers for them, though: she's ravenous for any information from the outside world. It's why she appreciates his calls and her other visitors so much; they each bring her new stories from the world from which it feels like she's been locked out of.

Without seeming to have even discussed it, their friends have all organized themselves into shifts: Patterson comes in the early morning, around six, on Mondays and Wednesdays, and keeps Jane company before Oscar arrives; Reade comes by on Tuesday evenings, after his late shift, to be there during the night and to give Jane's husband a chance to, hopefully, try to relax at home; Tasha comes by around dinnertime on Wednesdays and Fridays, and eats with the couple and always brings some much-needed humor; Kurt comes by mostly nights, whenever he can, after work or after dinner, and spends a few minutes here and there with Jane. He spends more time with her husband, she knows—hours, sometimes, late at night when they assume she's asleep—but neither of them ever mention it, and so she does not ask what they discuss or why. Out of all of them, though, Jane is surprised the most by Sarah Weller.

She visits _every_ day. Every morning since Oscar had to go back to work, and for days before that too, she arrives promptly at ten AM, just after NICU rounds are finished and Jane is back in her room. She comes in always smiling hello, her wavy blonde hair bouncing as she carries a gift in her arms. Every week it is something different: a flower arrangement or a bunch of balloons or her new favorite book or a nail polish that she's certain will look just _phenomenal_ on Jane. It took Jane a couple weeks to ask Sarah why she was taking so much care with her, why she was spending so much time at her beside: Sarah, after all, had her own child to look after, her own life to live; besides, they weren't exactly the _best_ of friends, and—Jane felt rude saying this, but she couldn't help but blurt— _Don't you have a job?_

At the time, Sarah had been painting Jane's nails a bright red; _Very sexy,_ Sarah had grinned a few minutes ago, showing her the bottle, and Jane hadn't bothered to mention that she wasn't really having sex these days. When the insensitive question burst out of her mouth, hardly ten seconds later, Jane had expected the blonde to be offended.

But far from looking insulted, Sarah had simply smiled. "Of course," she answered. "I'm a physical therapist." A moment later, after switching to Jane's right hand, she added, "But I only take afternoon appointments now."

It had taken Jane a second to realize what she was saying. She watched as Sarah applied a second coat of the red varnish to her left hand, careful to cover only the nails and not the surrounding skin.

"You…" She hadn't had the words at first, but Sarah had not seemed to mind. She had gone on with her painting, but, for the first time, Jane realized she was not doing so obliviously. This happy, bubbly, _this-nail-polish-is-sexy_ Sarah was not exactly a façade, but it was an outlook that took an extreme amount of effort. It was a persona that, Jane realized, was likely costing her thousands of dollars in missed business and lost customers.

For the first time in months, Jane cried over something that was not her little son.

On the first of every month, promptly at eight-fifteen AM, Jane receives an extra visitor. Though Edgar Reade does his best to be inconspicuous, Oscar can always spot him through a crowd, and rushes over to him even when Jane orders him to leave the man alone and let him visit the billing department in peace. Ever since he overheard Oscar's first fight with the insurance company on the phone all those months ago, Reade has been very quietly and very generously covering the entirety of their medical bills. At first, Oscar had absolutely refused it. For days, he had refused it. It was his family, his wife, his child, and he could care for them. No matter the cost, he could and would pay for it himself. He was a husband and a father and he could _do this_. But then Anthony started to get worse before he got better, and Jane was still bedridden, and he wasn't at work, he couldn't be at _work_ , and even if they sold their apartment to the highest bidder, they wouldn't be able to cover even _half_ of a single month's expenses—

"Do me a favor and just point me towards the billing department," Reade said one morning, and then he never needed to ask to find it again.

Each morning when he visits on the first of the month, with his checkbook discretely hidden away in his breast pocket so that neither Jane nor Oscar actually even know what it looks like, he sits with Jane for a few minutes, both before and after he goes to the second floor to settle their accounts. The first few times he stopped by, all she was was a jumble of tears and thank-yous and _You don't know what this means to us_ and there was her hand, holding onto his so hard, so damn hard he didn't know why she was still confined to a hospital bed.

The last few visits have been different, though. She is still grateful, and will forever be grateful, but she has learned that it isn't something Reade wants to talk about or even acknowledge. It's why his visits are so short. And when she stops saying thank you all the time, when she stops crying at just the sight of him in those perfectly tailored suits of his, he starts staying for longer. When she mentions one morning that she's bored, he brings the _New York Times_ with him the next Tuesday night after his shift, and they try out the crossword. She's awful at most of it—she never gets any of the pop culture references—but she does know a lot of the obscure facts; she pulls out solves that make him go, _Damn, Doe!_ and she always smiles. After a few days, that becomes their routine: they do the crossword on Tuesday nights, when he visits; he hoards all of them from the previous week, and they try to get through as many as possible.

Most of the days feel like that, the longer she goes on living her life in the hospital: she is hoarding moments, hoarding people, hoarding love—from her friends and from her husband and most of all from her too-little baby son. She is convinced that each minute could be their last, as so she lives in each one, as best she can. She gossips with Sarah and she laughs with Tasha and she smiles with Patterson and she hugs Kurt and she solves puzzles with Reade. She cradles her baby and she kisses her husband and she dreams of the day, hopes for the day, lives for the day that they can go home and all this will be behind them.

And one day it happens.

One day, the doctors all come to her in a clump, and announce it's time to go home—not just for her, but for her son, too. All of them, all three, can go home. She doesn't know what to say at first. Oscar has a thousand questions—a million variations of _Are you sure?_ come pouring out of his mouth even before they're finished explaining—but she hardly hears a single one of them. All she can think is that, if this is really true and they get to go home, she'll have to learn a whole new morning routine: all three of them will have to learn one, together, at _home_. Through her tears of relief and hope, she actually smiles.

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 _ **A/N**_ _: Thank you for reading. :)_


End file.
